Best mistakes

I probably should have added that my water/grist ratio for the rye IPA was 1.3 quarts/lb. I'd recommend going with as thin a mash as practically possible. I'd shoot for 1.5 quarts/lb if I had the mash-tun volume. Also, I generally heat the mash to 168 F (to lessen the viscosity) before sparging. Good luck!

 

Thanks for that. Yeah, thin mash makes a lot of sense. What would the implications be of going up to 2 qt/lb.

Sorry for derailing the thread, but I'd like to avoid a best mistake...If anyone else wants to jump in and continue to scare me with how rye has turned their mash to Quickrete, please feel free...

On another note, something I'm very afraid of happening is one of my cats attacking my shoelaces or otherwise compromising my stance as I'm pouring 5.25 gallons of wort into my fermenter. That would be hilarious/awful. But mostly awful.

 

I made a few goofs through time, I tend to jot them down on a piece of paper so I can laugh and remember them.

I brewed a LME NB kit called Emma's brew, a NB kit to benefit kids now (original girl recovered the last I knew!). Boiled up, cooled. Poured in the sanitized plastic bucket in the bathroom (coolest part of my apt). Go into the kitchen cleaning up from brewing then wander back to the bathroom and see the floor covered in wort. I quickly shut off the tap I had accidently left open after sanitizing. Lifted the 2.5 gallons left on the sink to get it out of the new wort pond. So mopped up, and lost about 2.5 gallons for a good cause. Had a nice and clean bathroom floor.

Another time I was carrying a primary bucket with on the dregs after transferring, was walking for the bathroom to clean it out, and the bucket flipped out my hands since the lid was not snapped back on. Poured the dregs on my wall to wall carpeting. Figured a quart or two of dregs.

Yet another time I was topping of a secondary glass carboy, filled it and then added ~ another quart before I realized it was full. I had been doing this in the dark to avoid sticking my beer with light. Now I just turn on a light.

Have more entries but that's a few. Cheers!

 

http://now.msn.com/walter-serpit-helps-rescue-family-from-fire-returns-for-beer

 

Using a plate chiller I had the water exiting via a hose into my bathtub. At some stage the hose slipped out of the bath and water was flowing directly onto the bathroom floor. I found out when the fire alarm started blaring. Turns out the water had flowed into the basement through the light fixtures and the fire alarm eletricals (quality rental I live in).

Anyhow lots of cleaning up (raining in the basement) and it took awhile to get the fire alarm to stop. My upstairs neighbour wasn't happy. My wife dreads me brewing now. Was a good beer though.

 

Years ago, a glass carboy full of belgian tripel wort shattered as I was moving it at the end of a long brewday. All I remember is a flood of wort, blood, and screaming obscenities for about 5 solid minutes. I went and bought a better bottle the next day.

 

I began kegging beer a few months ago, and I had just kegged an IPA that I dry hopped the hell out of with citra(ended up being a pricey brew) but I kegged it, force carbed it, and i enjoyed 2 glasses and filled a growler out of it before I realized there was a leak in the keg line and the bottom of the kegorator was full of my beer and it had ran onto the ground under my porch(I keep the kegorator on my screened in back porch)

basically wasted 4.5 gallons of beer, I cried for days.

 

A recent one was we forgot to the put the false bottom on the mash tun. Luckily we realized it right away but not before we had added our strike water and grist (a 10 gallon batch). I look over and it's sitting right there and simply hold it up for my brewing buddy to see - oh crap, he says. Had to dump the entire thing into the kettle, put the bottom in place, and dump it all back.

 

I had a glass carboy shatter when I was cleaning and rinsing it out. I was emptying it into a plastic tub, and it slipped and bounced on the edge of the plastic tub. You could have won a knife fight with some of the shards it produced, so I would say yes, be very respectful of the risk when handling a full carboy.

By the way, this is just a reply to your comment. In no way was this one of my "best mistakes".

 

Classic.

 

I was on my second batch of the day, transferred from the HLT and poured in the grain, had my first stuck mash. I blew on the output tube, no change. When I cleaned out the first batch I left the false bottom in the trash bag with spent grains. That was a mess! Had to scoop out the 150 deg grains to put in the false bottom...

 

My biggest case of gross negligence was pitching yeast in the wrong fermenter, so my dubbel ended up with both the Westmalle strain and the Chico strain. Compounding this, my IPA that didn't get Chico ended up with both Windsor and Notthingham (there's more to the story). Both beers were lovely.

 

I once made a Barley Wine and pitched both the Westmalle and Chico. ( On purpose! ) I realy like the beer but it did not score well in two compititions I entered it in. The funny thing is that not one judge remarked on the yeast profile!

 

My beer was intended to be a cross between a porter and a dubbel, so it was roasty for a dubbel (but maybe not roasty enough for a porter). I think the two yeasts more or less contributed equally to the fermentation. The yeast profile was less Belgiany than other beers I've made with the Westmalle strain, but not competely neutral like the Chico strain. This probably made for a better beer than a roasty beer made completely with the Westmalle strain. I would consider doing something like this again, intentionally. Of course, I would probably find a different way to mess it up (wrong hops in the boil, wrong water profile, etc).

 

Since I brew 10 gallon batches I always have 2 kegs of each batch. I brewed a really awful tasting British style pale ale, it could have been called an ordinary bitter I guess. Anyway I tried drinking the first keg, but finally I couldn't swallow another glass so I racked it back to a carboy and made some excellent malt vinegar from it. I forgot about the second keg for well over a year, was looking through the beer fridge and noticed that lonely keg with the faded label. Once I figured out what it was the plan was to go straight to the front yard with but first I decided to try it. It turned out really excellent after 15-18 months of lagering. So my happy mistake was not pouring it out immediately when I should have.

 

Could you have poured the mash into your kettle and rinsed the kettle out before the boil?

 

Nope, it had my first batch in it boiling!

 

In thinking about how to best incorporate coffee into an imperial stout, I wanted to use my recently acquired hoprocket. I had intended on hooking it up on the hot side, but inadvertently hooked it up on the cold side. I didn't notice the error until after everything was tightened, checked etc. I just went with it and the coffee presence came out fantastic.